Cats Prowl at Night

19 Jewelry-Rock

The Locklear Apartment Hotel managed to surround itself with an atmosphere of quiet luxury, an aloof reserve, well calculated to put outsiders on the defensive.

The clerk who stood behind the counter was somewhere in the early thirties — tall, slender, suave, and well groomed. He watched Bertha Cool approaching his desk, and imperceptibly his demeanour stiffened as he observed Bertha’s free-swinging stride, the manner in which she brushed aside all swank luxury of the lobby.

The clerk’s hair was brushed and oiled into sleek lustre. His eyebrows, arched and regular, managed to elevate themselves just enough to put Bertha on the defensive, had Bertha been the type to be put on the defensive by anything less than a battleship.

“Good afternoon,” the clerk said in the tone he would have used in greeting an interior decorator who had been summoned by the management. Not quite the tone he reserved for trades-men, yet definitely not the voice which he would use in addressing an honoured guest.

Bertha wasted no time being polite. “You have a Mrs. Cornish staying here — Dolly Cornish?”

“Ah, yes— Mrs. Cornish. And what was your name, please?”

“I’m Mrs. Cool.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Cool, but Mrs. Cornish gave up her apartment rather suddenly.”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

“Leave any forwarding address?”

“Her mail is being handled.”

“Where are you sending it?”

“If you care to write her a letter, Mrs. Cool, it will be handled in the regular manner.”

Bertha looked at him with exasperation. “Listen, you, I’m looking for Dolly Cornish on a matter of considerable importance. Now, if you know where she is, pass on the information. If you don’t know where she is, tell me how I can go about finding out.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cool. I’ve given out all the information I’m permitted to.”

“When did she leave?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. All that I’m permitted to say is that she gave up her apartment rather suddenly.”

“Anybody been on her tail?” Bertha asked.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Cool.”

“Anyone trying to find out where she is?”

“I’m certain I couldn’t tell you that.”

The clerk looked past Bertha Cool, over her shoulder, to take in a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man wearing baggy tweeds, who carried in his left hand a sheaf of folded papers held together with an elastic.

“Good afternoon,” the clerk said in a voice that was even more distant than that he had used in greeting Bertha Cool.

The man didn’t even bother to return the salutation. He ran through the folded papers, moving them with thick, stubby fingers. Midway through the pile he folded back the top segment by clamping his thumb in position. The darkened fingernail on the index finger held down the bill. “Acme Piano Rental Company,” he said. “Dolly Cornish. Rent’s due on her piano. Want to pay the bill, or do I go up and get the dough?” The clerk, for the moment, seemed definitely embarrassed. He glanced at Bertha Cool, said to the piano man, “Mrs. Cornish will get in touch with you within the next day or two.”

“She’s moved,” Bertha said.

The piano man looked at her, said, “Huh? How’s that?”

“She’s moved — gone away.”

“She can’t move that piano without written consent.”

“Well, she’s done it. Ask him.” The man turned to the clerk. “She here?”

“Well — she asked me to—”

“She here, or ain’t she?”

The clerk said with exasperation, “I’ll take care of the bill and will be responsible for the piano.”

“Five bucks,” the man said, pushing the bill out on the counter. “If she moves it without written consent it’s a serious offence.”

“We’ll guarantee there won’t be any damage and that she’ll get in touch with you at once.”

“She can’t move it. Five bucks.”

The clerk opened the cash drawer of the safe, pulled out a five-dollar bill, slapped it crisply down on the counter, and said, “A receipt, please.” He looked at Bertha Cool and said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha didn’t move, remaining with her elbows propped on the counter, staring down at the bill. She watched the man sign a receipt, shove the receipted bill across, put the five dollars in his pocket.

“Tell her to look at her lease agreement. She can’t move any leased goods.” The clerk started to say something, checked himself, glanced with exasperation at Bertha Cool.

The man swung away from the desk, headed back across the ornate lobby to the street door.

The clerk moved toward a series of pigeon-holes with the receipted bill, then detoured when only half-way there to drop it into the cash drawer in the safe.

“Almost forgot,” he said.

“Do some more thinking,” Bertha said, “and you might remember something.”

He was definitely supercilious. “I think that will be all, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha hesitated a moment, then apparently somewhat crushed, crossed the lobby toward the street door.

Bertha walked across the street to the news-stand. “Somebody moved a piano out of that joint across the street,” she said, “within the last day or two. I’d like to get the name on the moving van.”

The man shook his head. “I can’t help you.”

“Didn’t you notice the name?”

“I don’t remember seeing any van there within the last day or two, but, of course, I’m busy over here.”

Bertha covered four more stores with the same result. Then she went to the telephone and called her office. When Elsie Brand answered the telephone, she said, “What can you do on the lah-de-dah, Elsie?”

“What do you mean?” Elsie asked.

Bertha said, “Dolly Cornish was in apartment 15B down at the Locklear Hotel Apartments. The place is as stiff as a starched collar. Put on your most grand-dame air. Don’t act human; look down your nose at the male impersonator that’s behind the counter. Tell him you want to look over his vacancies, if he has any. String him along.”

“When do you want me to do it?” Elsie asked.

“As soon as you can get a cab,” Bertha said. “I’ll be waiting around the corner. You’ll see me, but don’t speak to me. After you come out, walk around the corner and I’ll tag along.”

Bertha hung up the receiver, decided she had five minutes to wait before Elsie could possibly get there. She walked over to the news-stand, looked over some of the magazines, then strolled up to the corner, waiting. She saw Elsie Brand enter the apartment hotel, emerge some fifteen minutes later. Bertha sauntered around the corner and Elsie joined her.

“Well?” Bertha asked.

“Did I hand that clerk a line!” Elsie said. “He mentioned they’d require references for a single woman. I asked him if the Mayor of the city and the Governor of the state would be all right. He called an assistant manager to show me around. They only have two vacancies. One of them is 15B.”

“It’s vacant?” Bertha asked.

Elsie nodded.

Bertha frowned. “What would you do,” she asked, “if you were renting a piano, and wanted to move it?”

“I— Why, I don’t know,” Elsie said, laughing.

Bertha said suddenly, “you’d call up the people you’d rented it from, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess I would.”

Bertha said with sudden decision, “Go back in there. Tell him that you understood from a friend there was another vacancy. Ask him if he’s certain you’ve seen them all. Try and find out if they’ve rented an apartment in the last two or three days. Put on the high-and-mighty act for him. He’ll fall for that. Otherwise you won’t get to first base.”

“Leave it to me,” Elsie said. “I have him eating out of my hand already. Do you want to wait here?”

“Yes.”

Elsie was back with the information in five minutes. “Apartment 12B was vacant until yesterday. A Mrs. Stevens took it then.”

Bertha grinned. “Nice chap, that clerk. It’s probably his master mind that originated the idea. All right, Elsie, go on back to the office.”

Bertha entered a telephone booth, called the Locklear Apartments, said, “A Mrs. Stevens left word that I was to call her in apartment 12B. Know anything about it?”

“Just a moment.”

A connection clicked, and a woman’s voice said, cautiously, “Hello?”

Bertha said, “This is the piano company. The clerk paid the bill on the piano, said you’d moved it into another apartment.”

“Oh, yes. I’m glad you called. I’ve been intending to call you. Yes, it’s quite all right.”

“Apartment in the same building?”

“Yes.”

Bertha said, “I have to look it over. There’s a charge of fifty cents.”

“Oh, that will be quite all right.”

“I’m in your neighbourhood now,” Bertha said.

“All right. I’ll be expecting you. 12B is the number. I should have notified you sooner.”

Bertha walked back to the Locklear Apartments. The clerk looked at her with exasperation, started to say something, but Bertha moved toward the elevators.

The clerk raised a folding gate and approached Bertha Cool with businesslike authority. “I’m sorry, but we don’t permit strangers to enter the elevators, unannounced.”

Bertha Cool smiled sweetly at him. “Mrs. Stevens, in apartment 12B, asked me to come right up,” she said. “I was just talking with her over the telephone.”

As the clerk tried to keep expression from his face, Bertha nodded to the elevator boy. “Let’s go,” she said.

Someone was talking on the telephone in apartment 12B when Bertha knocked on the door. A few moments later the conversation terminated, and Bertha knocked more loudly.

There was no sound from within the room. Bertha raised her voice. “Going to let me in, Dolly, or do I wait for you to come out?”

The door opened. An angry woman somewhere in the thirties stood glaring belligerently at Bertha Cool. “I have just been advised,” she said, “that you—”

“I know,” Bertha told her. “The clerk doesn’t like me. I don’t like him. Move over, dearie, and let me in.”

Bertha’s powerful frame pushed the lighter woman to one side with an easy lack of effort. She moved on into the apartment, nodded approvingly at the piano, selected the most comfortable chair, dropped down in it, and lit a cigarette.

The woman in the doorway said, “There are rules against this sort of thing, you know.”

“I know.”

“And the clerk tells me that I can have the authorities eject you.”

“He would say something like that.”

“That is correct, I believe.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have contacts at headquarters. A word to them, and in place of arresting me, they’d drag you down to the D.A.’s office for questioning. The newspapers would get your picture, and—”

“What do you want?”

“Just to talk with you.”

“The clerk tells me that you’re a Mrs. Cool.”

“That’s right.”

“He thinks you’re a detective.”

“Even a dumbbell gets a good idea once in a while.”

“Mrs. Cool, may I ask exactly what you want?”

“Sure,” Bertha Cool said. “Close the door. Sit down, take a load off your feet. Tell me about Everett Belder.”

“I don’t care to discuss Mr. Belder.”

“Tell me about his wife.”

“I understand she was asphyxiated.”

“That’s right.”

“I never met the woman in my life.”

“She’s got a letter about you,” Bertha said.

Mrs. Cornish’s silence showed her complete lack of interest.

Bertha said, “I suppose the idea germinated in the master mind of that bright clerk downstairs, but you shouldn’t have moved out of your apartment, dearie. That puts you in a bad light. You can imagine how your picture will look in the newspapers with some stuff under it like this: Mrs. Dolly Cornish, who, police claim, surreptitiously vacated her apartment and took another under an assumed name, following news of Mrs. Belder’s death. Mrs. Cornish was quite friendly with Everett Belder before his marriage.”

Bertha dropped ashes from her cigarette in the ash-tray.

Mrs. Cornish suddenly looked as if she were going to cry. “What — what do you want to know?”

“What have you got to tell?”

“Nothing.”

“Good stuff,” Bertha agreed enthusiastically. “The newspapers will eat that up. Keep that expression of near-tears on your face, and say nothing, and they’ll put a caption under that, ‘Nothing,’ sobs woman who sent Mrs. Belder to her death.”

Dolly Cornish straightened suddenly. “What are you talking about. I didn’t send Mrs. Belder to her death.”

Bertha sucked in a deep drag from the cigarette, said nothing.

“Mrs. Belder threatened to kill me,” Dolly Cornish went on, sudden indignation wiping the self-pity from her face.

“How long before she died?”

“The same day.”

“What had you done to make her want to kill you?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

Bertha said, “Pardon me if I don’t seem interested, dearie, but we hear that so many times.”

“This time it’s the absolute truth.”

“How did you happen to meet her?”

“I didn’t meet her. She called me here at this apartment hotel — and if you’re so interested, that’s why I changed my apartment. I wanted to be under cover so if she did try to do anything violent she couldn’t find me.”

Bertha kept her eyes averted so Mrs. Cornish couldn’t see the glittering, intense interest in them. “Called you on the telephone?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“It was the weirdest, most spine-chilling conversation I ever had with any woman in my life.”

“Now, we’re getting somewhere. I might be able to help you if you’d really open up.”

“How could you help me?”

Bertha turned then to look Mrs. Cornish full in the face. “Let’s not misunderstand each other,” she said. “I can help you, if I can help myself by doing it. I’m a detective. I’ve batted around. I know most of the answers. This is what you choose to call a spine-chilling experience. To me it’s routine stuff. Now, either go ahead and talk or try to keep quiet. If you talk, I’ll talk. If you try to keep quiet, I’ll ring headquarters.”

“You haven’t left me much choice,” Mrs. Cornish said with a nervous little laugh.

“I very seldom do,” Bertha retorted.

Mrs. Cornish thought things over for a few moments. Bertha gave her plenty of time.

“All right, I’ll talk.”

Bertha merely reached forward to grind out the stub of her cigarette.

“You’re a woman, Mrs. Cool. I can talk to you and say things that one couldn’t say to a man. I have a friend who says that twice in every woman’s life comes the chance for genuine happiness, that the big majority of women throw both chances away. He’s a mining man. He says that the good mines are those that have a big deposit of medium-grade ore. He says happiness is like that. You have to get a big deposit of medium-grade attributes in a man in order to make for happiness. He says most women throw their chances away to chase after the glittering samples of high-grade ore — what they call ‘jewellery-rock’ in mining circles. My mining friend says that those veins nearly always pinch out. That life just isn’t that easy. That when you find a really rich deposit of jewellery-rock, it’s a flash in the pan.”

“What was Everett Belder?” Bertha asked. “Jewellery-rock?”

“No. Everett was one of my chances for happiness. He was a great big deposit of better-than-average ore.”

Bertha lit another cigarette.

“I wanted to see him again,” Dolly Cornish said, “and I was glad I did.”

“Decide to hang on to him this time?” Bertha asked.

Dolly Cornish shook her head. There was a wistful look in her eyes. “He’s changed.”

“In what way?”

“I told you he was a deposit of better-than-average ore. Somewhere he’d got it through his head that he was jewellery-rock. He’s been trying to be something that he isn’t, and he’s been trying for several years. It’s ruined him.”

“Perhaps you could bring him back,” Bertha said.

Dolly Cornish smiled and the smile spoke more than words.

“All right,” Bertha said, “you’ve got that off your chest. Now we’ll talk about Mrs. Belder.”

“Wednesday morning Mrs. Belder telephoned me. She didn’t give me a chance to say a word. It was as though she had her speech all carefully memorized. She said, ‘I know all about you, Mrs. Cornish. Don’t start to evade, and don’t try to lie. You think you can turn back the hands of the clock. You can’t do it. He’s mine now, and I intend to hang on to him. I assure you that I can be very dangerous, and I am afraid you’ve made it necessary for me to do something about you.’ ”

“Did you say anything?” Bertha asked as Dolly Cornish paused momentarily.

“I tried to, but I’m afraid I stuttered and stammered. She wasn’t paying any attention to me, anyway. She only waited for a moment to get her breath, then she went on with the part that absolutely terrified me. She said, ‘I’m not a woman who relies on half-way measures. There was another woman who was living in my house, pretending to be a servant, but trying to make eyes at my husband behind my back. Ask her what happens to people who think they can pull the wool over my eyes.’ ”

Dolly Cornish’s lips quivered, then became tight.

“That all of it?” Bertha asked.

“All except the laughter. It was the laughter that did it, that wild, half-hysterical, malignant laughter. You can have no idea, unless you could have heard—”

“You hang up, or did she?” Bertha interrupted.

“She did.”

“Then what?”

“I was too paralyzed to do anything for a while; then I managed to get the receiver back on the hook. I was trembling.”

“If you were as innocent as you claim,” Bertha said, “you wouldn’t have taken it so hard.”

“Get this, Mrs. Cool. I’m going to be fair with you. Everett had been one of my chances at happiness. If I’d taken him when I had the chance, I could have kept him from degenerating into a fourflusher. I knew him. I knew his strength. I knew his weakness.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Bertha asked.

“Simply this, Mrs. Cool. I’d made up my mind that this was a world where dog eats dog, that I was going to look up Everett again.

If I found him the same, if I found that he still had the same appeal — well, I knew he was married, but I made up my mind that I was going to get him anyway.”

“Guilty conscience, eh?” Bertha asked.

“I suppose so.”

After a few moments’ silence Bertha said, “Of course, you’re not repeating this woman’s exact words. You’re giving your recollection of them.”

“I think I’m giving you almost her exact words. At any rate, I’m giving you the exact idea she conveyed. That was chiselled in my mind.”

Bertha Cool calmly selected another cigarette, lit it, took a deep drag and blew smoke out into the room.

“What did she say happened to this other woman?”

“It was terrible, that awful laughter—”

“Never mind the laughter, what did she say happened to her?” Bertha asked.

“She said to ask this other woman what happened to people who thought they could pull the wool over her eyes — and then I read about the body of the servant being found in her cellar.”

Bertha said casually, “you’ve got yourself in a hell of a mess, haven’t you?”

“How well I know it,” Dolly Cornish admitted ruefully.

“If you tell your story, it looks as if you’d been breaking up the Belder home, and either drove Mrs. Belder to suicide, or—” Bertha broke off to regard Mrs. Cornish with shrewd little eyes in which there was an unspoken accusation.

“Or what?” Dolly Cornish asked.

“Murdered her.”

Dolly drew herself up erect in the chair, showing both surprise and indignation. “Mrs. Cool, what do you mean?”

Bertha said, “Skip it. If you did murder her, you’d put on an act like that, anyway, and you didn’t, there’s no use swapping words. Were you relieved when you learned she was dead?”

Dolly Cornish met Bertha Cool’s searching gaze frankly. “Yes.”

Bertha turned away to watch the smoke eddying up from the cigarette which she held in her fingers. “In some ways I wish I hadn’t heard this story.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got to go to Sergeant Sellers, and I hate going to that man right now.”

“Why?”

Bertha somewhat wearily got to her feet. “As a mining proposition, he’d run about twenty dollars to the ton, but every once in a while, when things start going his way, he thinks he’s what you call jewellery-rock.”

Bertha started for the door.

“After all, Mrs. Cool,” Dolly Cornish said, “men are only human, you know. We have to put up with their weaknesses.”

Bertha turned in the doorway, surveyed Dolly Cornish appraisingly. “You do the tragic, sensitive-soul-all-bruised-to-hell act very nicely, dearie. I don’t mind if it’s just practice, but I’d be sore as hell if you really thought I was falling for it.”